The Photon operating system must prevent leaking information of the existence of a user account.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-258859	PHTN-40-000193	SV-258859r933638_rule		Medium

Description
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. If the pam_faillock.so module is not configured to use the silent flag it could leak information about the existence or nonexistence of a user account.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-10-29

Details

Check Text ( C-62599r933636_chk )
At the command line, run the following command to verify account information is not leaked during the login process: # grep '^silent' /etc/security/faillock.conf Example result: silent If the "silent" option is not set, is missing or commented out, this is a finding. Note: If faillock.conf is not used to configure pam_faillock.so then these options may be specified on the faillock lines in the system-auth and system-account files.

Check Text ( C-62599r933636_chk )

At the command line, run the following command to verify account information is not leaked during the login process:

# grep '^silent' /etc/security/faillock.conf

Example result:

silent

If the "silent" option is not set, is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

Note: If faillock.conf is not used to configure pam_faillock.so then these options may be specified on the faillock lines in the system-auth and system-account files.

Fix Text (F-62508r933637_fix)
Navigate to and open: /etc/security/faillock.conf Add or update the following lines: silent Note: On vCenter appliances, the equivalent file must be edited under "/etc/applmgmt/appliance", if one exists, for the changes to persist after a reboot.